Phil Starr

I've done that twice recently one of the downsides of in-ears is that you have this magnificent sound the moment you crash into the first song but only you can hear it. OOps 🙄

There are simply too many variables to give a definitive answer to this. Size of venue, genre of music, how loud the rest of the band are and so on. Thats only about how loud you need to be. That depends upon the power of the amp, the efficiency of the speakers and the tone you choose to set up. There are so many variations that no advice can be completely solid. However there is an approximate answer which applies to roughly 60% of the possible set ups and it is 200W into a single 12 or a 2x10 That's a bold statement so it needs some explanation. A few years ago I designed a speaker on Bass Chat. One of the design specs was that it should be ‘loud enough’ to work with a band on its own. I had to turn that into something technical so I made the basic assumption that the bass has to be as loud as the drums. No point in being louder, if the guitars are going to be louder than that then all is lost anyway. Match the drums and you are good. The next thing is how loud are drums? I found some health and safety measures and the average level at the drummer’s ears is around 100-103db. I took that to be 100db at 1 metre and that the bass would need a 40db dynamic range. So 100db +/- 20 and 120db clean was my target. Looking at specs for speakers efficiency wa around 94-100db for bass speakers and I took 97db/W as being typical. So at 97db/W you need to have 23db of gain which is 200W I gigged with one of these speakers for 2 years. The theory holds out for all normal gigs but not for really big spaces or outdoors where simple physics says you need more. There are a whole raft of amps that are 300W into 8ohms 500 into 4ohms. Any of these should be more than adequate.

Here you go

It was the AKG D5 I recommended, not that I think the D7 is a problem, I've just never tried one. The D5 is terrific at feedback rejection but at the cost of you having to be really close to the mic if it is to pick you up. It sounds terrific too and is built like a tank, makes the Shure feel flimsy (which it isn't) I have two which I don't use as: I have a loud singing voice so feedback is not an issue I bounce around like Tigger when I'm performing so I need something more forgiving of poor mic technique The D5 is cheap too, £73 at Gear4music and the sound is sooo good. I swapped out one mid gig once when I was mixing for another band and their SM58 went down. The vocals went from very ordinary to terrific.

FWIW, My technique is to apply a base coat with a paintbrush so that I have a good solid covering and no wood can be missed and show through. You can touch up bits you've missed easily enough. I apply my top coat with a brush too. I apply the Tuff Coat generously but only spread it loosely, a bit like spreading butter. Just making sure each panel is equally loaded with paint. At this point pick up the rollerand spread the paint evenly over all the panels taking care with the edges. Once you are satisfied about the even coating you are ready to texture the surface. The texture depends upon the roller you use , the pressure you apply and the speed you roll at. You need light, even pressure. Just enough to make full contact with the paint but not enough to dig into it which creates skid marks. Once you are happy with the finish on one panel you should try to work your way evenly arond all the panels at a nice steady pace. This all sounds more complex than it is in practice. Tuff Cab dries very slowly at first and in my shed which never gets very warm you can re-work the paint for at least half an hour. If it goes wrong it's simple to flatten it out and have as many 'goes' as you like. I've tried all sorts of rollers from the fine short-pile gloss rollers to the official Blue Aran corse foam ones. They all give a different finish but all work well with the fine rollers giving a 'linen' texture and the Blue Aran ones the closest to the sprayed 'splatter effect' you get with professional cabs. I use eiher the BA rollers or a long pile emulsion roller nd get a similar finish from both A couple of tips. you don't need a texture on the baffle which will be behind the grille so support the speaker on this side with the back of the cab uppermost. Make sure you have access to the whole cab before you put any paint on. If you can't walk round the cab freely then an even texture is difficult to achieve. Do the final coat in one go, it's hard to get an even coat if you let one side dry before doing the next. Don't do your first cab on a hot dry day as the paint will set too quickly if you get it wrong. If you aren't happy you shouldn't worry, doing a third coat isn't the end of the world.

Nice, I love playing that bass line It's the start of Chrismas for me when I do my first run through to check it is still under my fingers.

This was my experience. Mixing from the floor during soundcheck is such a game changer for a pub band with no sound engineer. Saving pre set mixes speeds up the whole set up and individual monitors are revolutionary. There are a myriad of extra things you can do of course but start off simple as you did and add in the frills only as you feel a need for them. How did the next two gigs go?

It depends upon the gig a little, I'm definitely more relaxed about pub gigs and those close to home. I generally carry spares for everything and our PA has some redundancy built in, we use the same speakers for monitors as we do for FOH in one of my bands. We carry a little four channel mixer as backup most of the time but I've stopped worrying about mixers going down, it's just never happened. I do have a backup iPad with the mixing software loaded up and I could also use my phone at a pinch to run the mixer.

At Snugs HQ, it’s not too far for me.

I do 90% of my practice with headphones. Mostly I use a Zoom B1ON now replaced by the B1 Four. Completely portable with batteries and comes with loads of emulations and effects, plus drum machine,tuner and metronome. Plus a jack input for playing along with recorded music. For the times I want to play loud I have an interface going into my studio monitors. RCF Ayra5’s but rokit,Yamaha, and many other brands have similar offerings. We all practice differently though. I ply in covers bands so a lot of practice is learning new songs. Having something that I can just plug and play woksfor me.

Well done Al hope it goes well.

Well I’ve finally done it. I’ve ordered custom tips from Snugs. One pair for my KZ ZS10 Pro and another for my Sennheiser IE100’s I’m booked in for impressions on the 16th and should have them for the new year.

I use a Gnome with a 10 (BC 110T) for the poor snowflakes who can’t manage in-ears in the same way you do 😄😂 Glad you had a fun gig.

I often find that simplifying things gives the best sound. Too often you can twiddle to solve one problem only to find you’ve created others. I’ve stopped saving settings at the end of a gig. They are rarely better than the basic mix I’ve set up in rehearsal. Don’t be surprised, i too get my best bass sound out of the PA on poles. You get several db of boost of the lowest frequencies from the floor and adjacent walls with backline and it just muddies everything.

I've just had a look at the saved calculations, my interal volume was assumed to be 10litres and the cab was tuned to 87Hz. I follow WINIsd in terms of inputting the mesured characteristics and leaving WINIsd to calculate the global parameters so you may get different results by using the spec sheet parameters. I'll have tweaked the cab after building the prototype. It's also possible that Fane have either changed the speaker or changed their specs over time. All my designs are built and tested before I share them so may vary from the calculated figures. Hope that helps

Another gig last night with my duo. We really have a stable PA set up of two RCF 310 tops and two more as floor monitors, mixer is an RCF M18 digital mixer. We don't use backline and its bass,guitar and two vox plus programmed drums. It's the only gig I do without in-ears but we ahve full control of the floor monitors so levels are not ear ringing and I find it a lot easier to sing with air around me rather than with in -ears. We are set up so the monitor sound reflects the front of house sound. In practice that means careful HPF of the bass from the monitors as we get so much of the sub 120Hz region coming from the FOH speakers so we need nothing of that in the floor monitors. This was a big pub if a bit less than ideal acoustically being divided into 4 separate spaces. I reckoned we had nearly 200 people there at the end of the evening though we started to an empty bar. The sound is bob on. You can't make more of a voice like mine but given the skill levels we have I'm pretty happy with how we sound. Having a fixed set up we stick with is such a help. All the settings are saved and recalled so set up is just plugging in. You can see the signal on the led meters on each channel so there is no irritating 'one-two' going on. Soundcheck is usually just 60 secs and the only thing I set is the master volume for the FOH unless the acoustics need a bit of eq. We were pretty loud last night with a full house and the two 10" tops were cruising with plenty to spare even though they were carrying bass and drums. This set up would carry most bands even with acoustic drums so it's surprising what you can do with reasonable quality but quite compact gear. Of cours it's never perfect, guitarist said at the end that he couldn't hear the guitar as well when playing the acoustic, the electric sounded great. I worked out last night htat normally we have the monitors lower so he can hear the acoustic partly from the direct acoustic sound. Somehow we'd turned the monitors up too high so other things were drowning out the acoustic guitar. I'll have to confess this morning

I think you have answered your own question You like what you have, so this is only a theoretical worry about whether it will be loud enough. The only test of whether it is loud enough is to use it as it is. Doubling the amp power won't double the sound level just increase it a bit, 3db at best. If you don't need the 3db why throw money at a non-existent problem. FWIW I use my Monza with a Warwick Gnome more often than not and have no problems with just 130W on tap.

I think @stevie uses a Trace Ellliott 1200. It does sound good

As I understand it these are passive speakers and are not going to drive to really high levels, and designed to work with subs crossing over at 180Hz with the recommended subs. Bose are not particularly forthcoming with specs. in terms of what you specify then you won’t need 130db 18” subs and something compact and lightweight should be acceptable. All the sub needs to do is match the output of your tops. I don’t know how you are planning on managing the crossover? Almost all active subs have a stereo crossover built in but you’ll need to check. Some of them will have a single crossover frequency most will be switchable so look for something that crosses over as high as possible to take as much as you can out of your tops. Im really reluctant to recommend anything in particular when I don’t know the tops well but FBT do a very competent 2x8 sub if you want something really tiny and I’d expect the RCF ART 702 would meet your needs. Both are above your budget new but you could pick them up used. Try your set up with a single Peavey though. If that works then there are a mass of 15” active subs that will match the old subs and be a lot lighter.

Surprised no one’s offered any advice on this. First of all the low cost suggestion, why not try just one sub? If nothing else you’ll know one is enough for certain. Theres an issue with subs that you don’t get small/light loud and cheap all from one speaker. Obviously without knowing a lot more about your band we can’t judge if you need a sub or how big it needs to be. I’ve seen one band locally gig with a single FBT 2x8 sub. Sub was only handling drums for them bass was backline but the kick sounded great even in a decent sized pub. I guess a 1x12 would have been equally loud. It can be done if you share prepared to manage the compromises. I’ve a pair of Wharfedale EVP subs. 43.5kg. I’ve recently bought an RCF 905 sub which is lighter and louder. Finally do you need a sub? £600 is quite a contribution towards some better tops which might add as much as a small sub to your PA.

Once you've played a couple of gigs and recorded them you can then do virtual tweaking of each channel. Optimise each persons vocal or instrumental sound without them having to be there. This is great for eq, reverb and delay on the vocals

My experience is that a touch screen is also superior to actual faders in terms of how easy it is to make fine adjustments, though that depends upon rock solid wifi I suppose as well as how well the software is thought out. Big sliders and a simple screen layout help.

I pretty much take the mixer to all rehearsals, it's so much simpler and saves so much time. It's down now to plug and play. Just like everyone else I think a couple of 'technical' rehearsals before changing something as fundamental as your mixer is really important. There are little things that you have to learn with every mixer and you'll probably want to do some basic eq for every channel as well as set up some reverb and delay on the vocals. On top of that you want to introduce the band members to doing their own monitor mix and this all takes time. My bands are all aware of the need to get the technical stuff right and are moderately happy to support all this. I try to make sure that it's about making each of them "sound as good as possible" through the PA and they love that. Generally speaking we try to rehearse only when needed and gig as often as possible so we rarely do wasted rehearsals. We'd never go more than a month without meeting up though so if gigs have been sparse or someone has had a long holiday we'll try to run through the set just before a gig. On monitor mixes I just tell them "it's better to do your own mix but I'll do it for you if you are struggling" None of them have ever really struggled with the mixing part of this but they regularly fail to log on to the wi-fi or log onto someone else's channel. The failsafe is to give them a FOH mix with 3db 'more me'

I'll bet the fear factor has already dropped a level or two @Al Krow It's just so easy to see what you are doing at a glance and everything is so visual. I always found it hard to switch from one analogue desk to another and pick out what tweaks had been made to each channel when you have a few hundred physical knobs, buttons and sliders. I used litle bits of tape to mark most of the settings on the vocal eq so I could recall a basic setting. So much easier to be able to see the response curve for each channel on screen and simply save settings. First gig with mine I allowed an extra hour to set up the mix and it was actually quicker to set up than using the analogue mixer I'd run for years. I was so nervous about the loss of physical sliders. That seems insane now, digital gives you so much more control and becomes second nature within three or four gigs. This is going to be so much fun, I'm jealous of your next steps.

To be fair John @Chienmortbb did all the real work